Setting it down

I have a secret. Okay, for many of my friends, it’s not really a secret. I don’t like football. Okay, it’s more than that. I believe that football does more harm than good. There are a number of reasons for this, but they aren’t important at the moment.

One part of my dislike of football has come in the form of me (mostly secretly) rooting against hometown heroes the Seattle Seahawks. Why? Because if they lose, they don’t go to the Super Bowl, and I get to stop hearing about football for six or so months. It’s not exactly in the spirit of kindness, but it’s been how I’ve held this for a few years (really, since the last time they went to the Super Bowl and it seemed like we’d never hear the end of it).

Today, I found myself checking in in this and it hit me out of left field (sorry for the sports adjacent metaphor) that I was making this worse for myself by giving it my attention. I could put my attention in so many better places. Places that would actually do some freakin’ good in the world. So I let it go.

I have a feeling I could repeat this process with a large number of other things. It may be one of the most important things we can do: setting down that which doesn’t serve us.